Goodyear (Thailand) Public Company Limited

In the 2000 U.S. presidential election, Obion County, Tennessee, was evenly split between Republican and Democratic support. By 2016, roughly 80 percent of voters cast ballots for Donald Trump. Behind this political shift were the closure of a Goodyear tire plant, the area’s largest employer, and the influx of Chinese-made tires. Since opening in 1969, the plant had provided high-paying jobs where high school graduates could earn 100,000 dollars a year including overtime. But from 2004 to 2008, imports of Chinese passenger vehicle tires more than tripled to over 45 million units, forcing the closure of at least four domestic plants. Goodyear announced the shutdown of its Union City plant in February 2011, eliminating 1,900 jobs. The county’s unemployment rate climbed to nearly 17 percent by August of that year, about 2 million dollars in weekly payroll vanished, and an estimated 2,000 to 4,000 jobs at related businesses were put at risk. By 2017, three-quarters of the county’s manufacturing jobs had disappeared, and more than a decade after the plant closure, the unemployment rate remained roughly one percentage point above the statewide level.